The Nottingham killer Valdo Calocane is among dozens of convicted violent criminals in a secure hospital allowed to claim state benefits under a policy that Labour on Monday pledged to review.
Calocane, 32, is one of nearly 80 convicted killers, rapists and other violent criminals detained at Ashworth secure hospital in Merseyside who are able to claim thousands of pounds in universal credit and employment and support allowance, according to a Freedom of Information request by The Telegraph.
Responding to the request, the hospital that held Ian Brady, the Moors murderer, said it was “standard practice” for criminals like Calocane to get benefits because they had not been handed prison sentences and instead were treated as patients because of their mental disorder.
Unlike prisons where benefit claims are banned, the £390 a month universal credit payments enable convicted criminals to build up pots of thousands of pounds before release because their basic bed and board is already covered by the state.
Over 20 years, that could amount to £93,000 at the current universal credit rate. One woman, Nicola Edgington, who killed her mother, got £8,000 in back payments in benefits on release after three years in a secure psychiatric unit. She then killed a woman with a butcher’s knife in a street in London.
Paranoid schizophrenic Calocane was originally charged with the murders of 19-year-old students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar and school caretaker Ian Coates, 65, but these were downgraded by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to manslaughter due to his diminished responsibility.
He got an indefinite hospital order instead of a prison sentence because he was judged to be in the “grips of a severe psychotic episode” during his killing spree on June 13 last year.
Attorney General Victoria Prentis secured a review of the “unduly lenient” sentence by the Court of Appeal, but the judges upheld the original ruling on the basis that there was “no error” in law. If it had been upgraded to a jail sentence, it would have barred Calocane from claiming benefits.
A Labour spokesman told The Telegraph: “If we are privileged to come into power, Labour would urgently look at this case, including talking to the victims’ families.”
It is understood work and pensions secretary Mel Stride was “very concerned” about the case and had also ordered a review of it.
Emma Webber, mother of Barnaby, speaking on behalf of three families, told The Telegraph it was “absolutely disgraceful” that killers such as Calocane could “stockpile benefit money into his bank account whilst all of us fight on a daily basis to try and begin to rebuild our lives.
“The criminal justice system in this country is broken and support offered to victims and their families is woefully inadequate at best. We support any incoming government to address these as a matter of urgency,” she said.
Julian Hendy, from the Hundred Families charity, which supports families after mental health related homicides said: “It’s indefensible for convicted dangerous offenders who have committed the most serious of crimes to be rewarded with benefit payments.
“It’s particularly wrong that such offenders can, over the years, accrue many thousands of pounds in taxpayer-funded payments when they have no expenses, whilst their victims struggle to access effective long-term care and support.
“It is a slap in the face for bereaved families. It’s not right and needs to change. We are calling on the new government to commit to correcting this wrong.
“By our calculations many millions of pounds could be saved and much better spent on victim services or more assertive care for people with serious mental illness to prevent further, avoidable tragedies.”
Len Hodkin, a lawyer, whose mother was killed by Edgington, now serving a life sentence, said: “I would understand paying benefits if they were living in the community, but it cannot be right when they are being housed, fed and looked after in a secure hospital at taxpayers’ expense.”
